The present disclosure provides photonic band gap structures and related systems, devices and methods.
Research in instrumentation for molecular imaging continues to look towards developing scanners with improved sensitivity and temporal resolution, thereby improving the 3D spatial localization of activity distributions within patients and improving quantitation in functional imaging tasks. Several new scintillation materials with high brightness, such as LSO, LYSO, and LaBr3:Ce, have recently been developed to improve scanners, but there is still a need to improve the overall performance of current detectors for, e.g., providing scanners with significantly improved properties.
Current detector configurations use scintillator coupling techniques that are inefficient in collecting the scintillation light to be used in the detection process. For example, far finer timing resolution (significantly better than that currently implemented in the field) could be achieved for PET, allowing the use of time-of-flight (TOF) measurements to offset depth-of-interaction blurring effects, and enhanced light output could be used to facilitate further improvements in energy resolution, thereby improving sensitivity.
Thus, there is a need for improved devices and methods for increasing light transfer efficiency to the photodetector, e.g., leading to an improvement in the temporal resolution, spatial resolution, and/or energy resolution of a detector.